October ’18 release for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

The October ’18 release packed a lot of new features for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. There’s been some design changes to the client, but also some new features in the embedded Power BI experience inside the Dynamics 365F&O client. Let’s take a look!

Design changes

The general design of forms and the navigation pane has gotten a cleaner look and personally I think this is a step in the right direction. It gives a whole better feel to the client and the overall user experience. It reminds me a bit of the design in Windows 10 at the moment, and maybe that’s what Microsoft are trying to do here.

First off is the homepage. There are some changes to the calendar font thickness(Month and year is now in bold) and there are more defined boxes to separate the different workspaces with a smaller font.

Application release 8.0 – Platform release 15 to the left and Application release 8.1 – Platform release 20 to the right

On the forms there’s a new design on the navigation bar:

Application release 8.0 – Platform release 15 to the left and Application release 8.1 – Platform release 20 to the right

The details form also has a new look:

Application release 8.0 – Platform release 15 to the left and Application release 8.1 – Platform release 20 to the right

New in this version is the Add and Hide columns functionality which lets you easily add and hide columns on a list page without going into the form designer.

Application release 8.0 – Platform release 15 to the left and Application release 8.1 – Platform release 20 to the right

Also when going into the new Add columns functionality you can create a new field which was introduced in a previous version:

Power BI Embedded

One other thing that is new and probably the most awesome thing in this release from my point of view is that you now can edit Power BI Embedded Analytics content directly in the client. Go to the Options tab of any workspace that contains Power BI Embedded Analytics and press Edit report Analytics – all companies:

That will take you into edit mode and you get access to all the same editing functionality as you would when you are editing Power BI Reports in the Power BI Service (Add new fields, change visualizations, add/change filters etc):

You can also add new pages to your report and create a whole new report based on the existing dataset:

 

I’m really looking forward to test this new functionality more in depth, but I like what Microsoft has done with D365FO for this update.

Any questions or comments feel free to reach out to me on email or via the comment section below.

That’s it for now, cheers!